An Evening With Don Foresta

Sonic Acts presents research artist and art theoretician Don Foresta. He will be giving a talk in Amsterdam on Wednesday, 4 June and a talk in Arnhem on Thursday, 5 June. Foresta’s talk in Amsterdam is entitled ‘Communication Space & Change in Representation’, and is about the collective space made up of all the means of communication we have at our disposal. This is where society sees and understands itself, where each new generation learns its values – how to deal and interact with other human beings. What is the role of art and the media in constructing this communication space?
Don Foresta's career as a research artist and art theoretician spans over 40 years. He has pioneered the use of new technologies as creative tools since the early 1970s, with recent attention to online creation and archiving. Don Foresta was the director of the American Cultural Center in post-‘68 Paris from 1971 to 1976. There he exposed the French audience to works by Nam June Paik and the Vasulkas, and invited French artists to set-up collaborations between art and electronic technology.
In 1976 he founded the video art department of ENSAD (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs) in Paris, the first such department in Europe. He worked for Nam June Paik and collaborated for several years with a.o. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz. In 1981 he organized his first online image exchange by telephone between the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT and the American Center in Paris. These exchanges were followed by experiments with telephone, fax, minitel and the internet. He was a commissioner (with Tom Sherman and Roy Ascott) to the 42nd Venice Biennial in 1986, building one of the first computer networks between artists. His work Mondes Multiples (1990) is recognised as a landmark in the fields of art and science. He has contributed to many publications and has written about philosophical parallels between art and science in a period of profound change.
Foresta was also a Professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts - Paris/Cergy. He is currently coordinating a permanent, very high bandwidth network for artistic, educational and cultural experimentation: MARCEL. MARCEL now has 150 members in 22 countries, 40 of whom are connected permanently over a multicasting platform.
Don Foresta
‘Communication Space & Change in Representation’
Wednesday 4 June 2014 at 19.30 hrs
STEIM, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Admission fee: EUR 5,00 / EUR 2,50 (students/CJP/65+)
Tickets on sale at the door
Don Foresta
'Reflections On The Now' Public Lecture
with Juha Van ’t Zelfde, Don Foresta and Jonas Lund (via Skype)
Thursday 5 June at 15.00 hrs
ArtEZ Academy of The Arts Arnhem
Auditorium, Oude Kraan 74, Arnhem
Free entrance